Snarky Simon Cowell now says he’s “ap palled” by comments he’s made to contestants on his TV shows.

“There’s many, many times where I’ve watched the show back and I’m absolutely appalled,” he says of his British series “The X Factor” and “Britain’s Got Talent.”

“You do the show, you’re not aware of what’s happening in the room outside,” he tells Piers Morgan on “Piers Morgan’s Life Stories,” airing Saturday on Britain’s ITV1.

“You know, somebody just said, ‘My dog Lassie died yesterday,’ I’m in a bad mood and, you know, awful, and you see it in that context, it’s very, very difficult to watch.”

While Cowell doesn’t specifically mention “American Idol,” he does say the studio audiences watching all his TV shows egg him on, in a way. “You become part of a mob and when you watch the show back you realize that you’ve gone too far,” he says.

It’s not known if Morgan’s interview with Cowell will eventually air in the US.

ITV1 shows streamed on the network’s Web site can only be viewed in the UK.